Pretty much by accident, I was right there when Bill de Blasio’s 2013 mayoral campaign came to life.
Lightning may have struck twice as I think I might have been at the beginning of another candidate’s rise.
That first time, I was covering a protest meant to save Cobble Hill’s Long Island College Hospital, when a mayoral candidate given little chance showed up. A political ploy meant to put Bill onto the front pages of the tabloids worked for him but unfortunately not for the hospital.
I came upon Garcia by accident as well. At a January Zoom debate, she was given a question that I had submitted asking whether there was some way to improve the way that city agencies work. Here in Red Hook we see how slow things go when it comes to parks or traffic, for example.
Garcia came to life with a smile as she answered:
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“Oh… yes! I’ve been on the receiving end of the bureaucracy trying to move capital projects. The amount of oversight that is not necessary is overwhelming. We can audit on the back end. There is no need to have mocks, and OMB and the comptroller, and everyone else that make it take literally nine to twelve months to procure anything. That is wrong. I would make sure that it would be wiped out, whether it be through legislation or executive order. That would be the first piece.
The second piece is that we need to have incentives in our contracts for speed. Because speed is money in capital construction. We know what works and we tend to go through this process where it is so painful to get anything open. A 12-year construction plan is insane! When I’m mayor, I know where all of the real challenging places are in the bureaucracy, and how to get rid of them.”
Yay! – somebody who knows what the problems are, because, in her case, she’s lived them having worked in at least four city agencies over the past 15 years, including as boss. We’ve seen here how the incentives to do, say, a park renovation, are to drag it along as long as possible, causing projects to go over budget – making more money for the contractors.
So, while I still wasn’t all that invested in the race -being a local paper we cover local as opposed to citywide contests, she stayed in my brain.
I’m not exactly sure how Paperboy entered my cranium. I have one of the campaign postcards on my desk, and one day I spotted his Love Bus on Myrtle Avenue. Paperboy Prince is nothing if not flamboyant!
I had it in my head to support these two candidates, but I meant to keep that to myself until recently, when Andrew Yang began leading the polls.
Is it possible that what is supposed to be the more rational blue part of the country would copy the less rational red part and elect someone with no government experience – someone with off-the-top of his head ideas that he loves to hear himself say?
Which is when the idea of this endorsement began. And then, a karmic thing happened – I saw the advertisement Paperboy’s Food Insecurity fundraiser, featuring Kathryn Garcia.
I was excited to go, but honestly had no idea what to expect.
It turned out to be the most heartwarming political event I have ever been to, with both candidates up close and in person proving to be real, genuine and sincere in everything they did and said.
Even though it was a political event – politics was not really part of it. There was no ideology, no platitudes, just two people there to have a conversation about what they each thought important to bring to the city.
Paperboy is an accomplished entertainer, but at the same time a serious thinker who sees the city from the bottom up. Garcia is an accomplished city manager who knows what the problems are. Perhaps she discovered that she could also be an entertainer, as Paperboy’s challenges included dancing and drawing, and she got into both.
It wouldn’t be the worst thing for both of them to play leading roles in the city. Kathryn Garcia would make us a better run city as we march headlong into a precarious future, Paperboy Prince would make sure that the ride was both fun and filled with love.
